


Bad Ideas

by GlitterSolvesEverything



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: @bioware stop being cowards and let me help him start a revolution deliberately please and thank you, look i just think the purple hawke/anders romance is fucking hilarious in the first couple of acts, love my terrible emo husband
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-19 11:41:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29749977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GlitterSolvesEverything/pseuds/GlitterSolvesEverything
Summary: Marian Hawke spends a lot of time flirting at Anders. It's mostly a joke. (Except, increasingly, it isn't).
Relationships: Anders/Female Hawke
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	Bad Ideas

The first time Marian Hawke tells Anders he has a nice arse, it's mostly a joke. 

Sure, it's the truth - at least, from what she can see through those robes which mages always insist on wearing. Which is a little bit absurd of them. Particularly if they're trying not to be noticeable to any passing templars - unless wearing pants would stop their connection to the fade? "Quick, cast a healing spell!" "Oh, I would, but my junk isn't hanging loose so I'm all out of magic till someone gets me a skirt." She runs the theory past Bethany on the way home that night. Bethany isn't convinced. 

Anyway, Anders' arse. She mainly makes the comment to lighten the mood - he's been grumpy and withdrawn and shamefaced since the whole glowing blue and outing himself as an abomination thing. (Silly, really; maybe she's a little bit fucked up, but she mainly reckons that was hot. She also runs this past Bethany. Bethany is concerned). 

But instead of the normal replies her heavy-handed flirting gets - which range between being good-naturedly waved away as banter, reciprocation (this being the most common response, naturally, she's an absolute snack) or sometimes people getting amusingly flustered - instead, this pretty, glowy mage boy with his soft voice and his angry eyes looks right at her. "No," he tells her firmly, with a kind of grave authority that pulls her up short like a cat with a door closed in its face. "Don't go there."

And much like a cat faced with a closed door, Marian Hawke can't leave the idea alone from that moment on. 

"I'm just teasing him," she defends it to Varric and his raised eyebrow. "It's bonding. Group morale. Can't have him moping about like that." 

"Mmhm. How come Blondie's the only one whose arse rates a mention, then?" Varric asks. 

"Oh, Varric, I didn't realise you were jealous. I'm sure your arse is lovely. I just don't really get as good an angle on it - but if you stand up on the table, I'll be able to see-" 

"Oh, no you don't. That's between me and Bianca," Varric says, fending off her hands and scooting further back in his chair. 

Anders, for his part, mostly ignores it. Tries to, at least. Sometimes he doesn't quite manage not to hear her, and his ears flush red. A couple of times, it makes him lose his train of thought. She stores these moments away gleefully, smirking to herself late at night at the knowledge that at least on some level, her constant needling is affecting him. And he's still hanging around. Bonding, she thinks smugly. 

Her biggest success yet comes in the Deep Roads. He agrees to come on the expedition, slightly to her surprise; the pay Bartrand is offering is ok, but not extraordinary, and it means leaving his clinic. And it also means going down for weeks into the stinking, claustrophobic, darkspawn-infested depths. Though Anders voluntarily chooses to work right next to the sewers; she guesses he just thinks he'll feel at home. 

"I'm a Grey Warden," he points out (which isn't actually refuting her guess, as such). "I can sense darkspawn and fight them relatively safely. It makes sense for me to come. Plus, you'll need a healer."

"Mm. Dangerous things, expeditions," Hawke agrees absent-mindedly. 

"Oh, not the whole expedition. You individually are going to need one." 

"Says who?" she says, instantly offended. 

"Says the five times you've been in at the clinic for me to patch you up this week," he tells her pointedly, finishing bandaging her arm. "If you don't like me saying it, try getting stabbed less." 

"I can't help being so popular," she tells him. He rolls his eyes, but he follows her into the Deep Roads anyway. 

They're making their way around the collapsed portion of the tunnel when Anders falls behind the group, stopping to examine the corpses of the recently defeated darkspawn. 

"Can you go grab Blondie?" Varric asks, wincing as he heaves Bianca up over his shoulder. "I think I pulled something there."

"Get him yourself," Hawke answers tiredly, leaning an elbow against the wall. 

"Should've brought your sister instead," Varric mutters. "Bethany wouldn't let me suffer just to look at anatomy specimens."

Hawke ignores this. After Carver, there was no way she was bringing her little sister into a darkspawn warren. "Hey, pretty boy," she yells back to Anders. He's dusting his hands off on his robe. 

And he looks up. 

His face closes off a second later, as he realises what name she's just gotten him to answer to, but the deed is done. The victory is hers. Varric witnessed it. Anders approaches them, all affronted dignity, and pointedly only heals Varric. Hawke couldn't care less. She won. 

And pretty soon, she has bigger problems to care about. 

Anders has stopped sulking by the time Bartrand traps them in the ancient thaig. He heals them all, keeps them on their feet despite how few health potions she'd had on her when they were trapped. He's good to fight alongside, all that trapped power and anger finding an excuse, an outlet. It's how she fights. Something in her recognises it. Trusts it. 

It's strange to trust new people like this. Back with the mercenaries, paying off the debt it took to get her family into Kirkwall, she found people she could work with. People she knew wouldn't stab her while her back was turned, wouldn't turn Bethany in to the templars; but that sort of wary truce felt different. When Varric aims his immense crossbow just shy of straight at her, she knows automatically that it means the dark next to her is scuttling in a way it really shouldn't. When Fenris cuts a little ration hard-tack biscuit into four, she bickers about hers being tiny, but assumes that he has cut them fairly. When she takes a hit, it stops surprising her that the wound heals almost immediately, tingling as Anders, always observant, closes it up. And she sees them start to look to her when they set up camp (such as it is). Sees the grins get easier, the quiet laughs readier, as she jokes and teases and keeps the Deep Roads sitting light on all of their shoulders. 

They come with her back to her uncle's, the other two warmly quiet as Varric promises to tell the story so grandly that even Hawke's mother can't get mad at them being a full week late home. 

And so they're there when Marian opens the door and sees her sister in the metal grip of a templar. She feels all the long effort, the worry, the hiding of Bethany's childhood collapse over her in an instant. 

"It's ok," her little sister tells Marian as they lead her away to be locked up for the rest of her life. "Look after Mother. I'll be ok." 

Marian meets her mother's eyes as the door closes behind Bethany and locks them in silence. She knows they both heard the words Bethany didn't say, would never say, is too kind and good and sweet to say. This wouldn't have happened if you'd been here. This wouldn't have happened if you'd protected her. 

"Hey, Hawke," Varric says quietly. "Let's get a drink." 

They stay and drink with her, get beyond drunk with her, collapse in Varric's room in the pub with her and all wake up with revolting hangovers the next morning. 

At some point after the fifth cup, Anders folds his arms as she leans heavily against a pillar. "You were in a circle," Hawke remembers belatedly. 

He shrugs. "Not here."

"Ferelden was worse?" She hopes he'll say yes. His was bad enough to run from. 

Anders doesn't. Healers; used to giving bad news. "I don't know for sure. The knight commander here is strict. In Ferelden they told us they were lenient, but, well." There's something dark in the last word, like a concealed blade. 

"Well," she repeats, going for mocking and landing on flat. She exhales through her nose. "My father escaped one."

"Bethany could too," he offers. 

Hawke rests her head back against the column. "And be hunted. Made Tranquil if they catch her. She hated the fear of being caught enough when it'd just mean the circle."

"They shouldn't be able to do that," he says quietly, and she hears the blade's edge again. "No one should be able to destroy a person like that."

She remembers Karl, the agony creasing Anders' face before Justice had taken over. The gentleness, the final, abortive, useless care in the gesture as he shoved the knife into his friend's ribcage. "Not completely destroyed," she says, thinking of how Karl had begged to die before he was lost to it again. 

Anders meets her eyes. His burn a little too bright, a little too pale. "No," he agrees, the sharp edge of his voice naked now, honed with rage and fear. "Trapped." 

I would rather die, Marian thinks, but doesn't say it. She'll never have to choose between those options. None of the cookie-cutter blond men with their thumb heads and their tincan armour will ever cut her identity away, leave her a blank little husk. Just Bethany. 

"She's so kind," Marian tells him hopelessly, glaring out at the tavern. "She never liked using her magic to hurt anyone. She just came along on jobs to keep me out of too much trouble."

"Quite a task," Anders half-smiles. It suits him, before it falls away. "I hope it's enough. And if one day she needs to get out of there, I'll try to help." 

Marian nods, and hears what he isn't saying. It might not be enough. They might take her anyway. She clears her throat, tries for her normal lightness. "And here I thought us making it back would be the biggest family news for the week. Younger siblings. Can't stand not being the focus."

He snorts softly. 

She stares upward, makes herself unfocus, forget the conversation, forget Karl, forget the templars, forget Bethany. She can’t be moping around like this. No one wants to drink with someone who’s moping like this. She pushes up from the column, resets her face into an amused mask. 

"Well," Hawke says, smiling with just a little too much good humour to really sell it, "it's not like it's a completely terrible homecoming. At least I'm filthy rich now. And we have one less mouth to feed."

Anders doesn't laugh at the joke, but he lets her make it. He presses a hand to her shoulder. Gentle. Healer's hands. "If you want to kill them all, I'll help you do it," he says quietly. And then he's polite enough to go and get more drinks from the bar before her bright smile cracks. 

It makes a lot of things different, over the next few years, having money. She buys her mother the old Amell estate - an expensive apology, but not enough of one - and makes sure all her friends have enough to eat, enough for rent, buys all the rounds when they drink (more nights than not) at the Hanged Man. She can't quite stop her old avarice - it's pretty deeply embedded after their time as refugees - but without the desperation of an empty stomach behind it, she stops taking absolutely every job anyone offers to pay her for. She only turns down around four in the whole three years, but still, it's progress. 

Hawke keeps flirting at Anders. It's a habit now, a fun game to play with herself, for all that he barely seems to notice it. She sends the money for his clinic to 'pretty boy' or 'the sexiest manbun in Lowtown', and enjoys knowing that the clinic's ongoing operation means that he's answering when her messengers call him that. She makes lewd suggestions for things they could go do to each other when the opportunity presents itself naturally in conversation. The posher a part of town they're in at the time, the better: they rarely get through the market at Hightown without scandalising the pearls off a noble woman. And she tells him, unfilteredly, when he looks good. 

Which, well, he does. Quite frequently. And he said himself that he didn't think anyone would still be interested given his and Justice's… arrangement, so clearly he wasn't hearing it as much as he deserved to. Not everyone could be blessed with Hawke's unflappable self-confidence; sometimes a man might just need to hear from an incredibly beautiful woman how good his hair looks like that. 

He doesn't tell her the same, but that's fine. She knows she's gorgeous. It's a bit rude of him not to say it, but the regular presence of that pleased, embarrassed flush on his ears and cheeks will do for now. She can just keep teasing him and pretending very hard that she hasn't noticed herself starting to mean it. 

Except then, Hawke starts dreaming about him. 

Specifically about doing the things she scandalised Kirkwall's noble women with the suggestion of. About him doing them to her. She keeps waking up, breathing hard, sheets tangled, before remembering that she can't do any of that with him in real life. And then, usually, she has to bloody see him the next day at the Hanged Man for drinks and cards. 

Anders tags along with them on jobs some days, and Hawke loses track of what she's being asked to do because of how completely focused her brain gets on him beside her. The way he moves, the texture of stubble on his cheeks, of the shorter-cropped hair around the sides and back of his head; the gentleness of his hands, the unrelenting anger in his eyes as he glares out at Kirkwall. She ends up agreeing to all kinds of absurd work - fighting a dragon, Maker's sake - because her stupid brain won't let her focus, won't let go of the constantly-triggered need to just push him into a wall and see how far that blush might spread once she gets him out of his robes. 

Anders, maddeningly, seems fine. Seems completely unbothered. Isn't losing his mind at her being next to him. After the dragon, he crouches next to her, fingers brushing gently over her skin as he heals her burns and cuts. He frowns with the evening sunlight turning his perfect face golden. Hawke stares at him, holds herself still with pure force of will and with the constant reminder that Varric and Aveline are here too and wouldn't appreciate front row seats to her riding Anders until that perfect self-control shatters, until he's just as desperate under her as she is just sitting next to him-.

Anders finishes the healing magic and claps her on the back. He gets up and walks over to start on Aveline. Hawke flops backward onto the ground and buries her face in her arms. 

She starts sleeping with Isabela. Maybe it's just been too long since she's gotten laid. Maybe if she fucks someone - someone good, not just the people she occasionally chats up in the Docks or that boy from the Blooming Rose - it'll get whatever this is out of her system. And Isabela is good. Practiced, and enthusiastic, and athletic. It's good. They're fighting better as a pair, their four knives flying like a sharp tornado. They get to spend more time together, and Maker but Isabela is fun to spend time with. She even makes Hawke's mother laugh one morning. And there aren't any feelings involved. Hawke doesn't lose track of everything when Isabella walks into a room. She doesn't stay up late wondering about her, chewing over things she's said. They're just friends, it's just fun, and it's good. 

Until, that is, Isabela hoists her up with slightly too much force, and Hawke hits the back of her head hard on the carved hardwood headboard. 

"Looks worse than it is," Isabela says bracingly, cutting a strip of Hawke's (new, expensive) bedsheets to stop the split skin of her forehead from bleeding. "Still, we should get you to Anders' clinic. See if you're still ok to fight."

"Oh," Hawke says, her addled, mid-sex, mess of a brain throwing out a series of images of Anders and the embarrassment of going to him, of all people, right now. "I don't know. I don't think I need to."

"I'm not going to be the one to cause any major problems with that pretty head of yours," Isabela says, leaning in and kissing her lightly. "You're going. Who knows, maybe we'll be lucky and he'll tell you to stay in bed for a week." 

Hawke flashes through appreciative lust at Isabela's tone, dread and embarrassment at the thought of Anders knowing, and a highly frustrating mental image of him ordering her to bed with that commanding voice he almost never bothers to use. The sheer number of things her mind is trying to fit all at once makes her dizzy. 

"On second thoughts," Isabela says concernedly as Hawke sits heavily down on the bed, "It might be safer to bring him here. Can't have you tumbling into the sewers next to the clinic by mistake. You'd absolutely reek."

"That's what sewers do," Hawke acknowledges. "Look, Bella, it's really fine. I'm fine."

"How many fingers am I holding up?" 

Shit. "Six," Hawke admits. 

"Thought so. Hold on, I'll go get him."

She's gotten her robe buttoned up by the time they get back, the sheets a little bit less obviously rumpled. Anders follows Isabela in, and his face doesn't change, doesn't show any surprise. He wouldn't care anyway, Hawke reminds herself. And Isabella probably told him what happened on the way. She's a woman of many talents, but Bella is even less discrete than Hawke is. He sits next to her, starts to unwind the sheet bandage. 

"Not exactly how I was hoping to get you into bed," Hawke says. If she doesn't act like she feels awkward, it can't be awkward. Anders is in my bed, her lust-addled idiot brain tells her, stating the uselessly obvious. 

"Sounds like she's fine," he tells Isabela dryly. But he stays, asks a few questions, assesses the damage with that practiced, calm manner he has with his patients. 

"So, I didn't break her?" Isabela checks. 

"No, she'll survive. Just take it easy for the next few days," he tells Hawke, in a tone which understands and acknowledges that she'll be out on the street with her daggers in hand the next morning at the latest. 

"Are you putting her on bed rest?" Isabela says delightedly. "Please, say yes. I have so many plans." Her voice is laden with innuendo. 

It's mainly wishful thinking when Hawke sees Anders' expression go flat at this. “If you can keep her here. I don’t much rate your chances.” 

“Oh, I can be very persuasive,” Isabela purrs, flopping down onto the bed beside her. 

“Then I’ll leave you two to it. Try not to hit your head again,” he tells her, all business, and leaves. 

Hawke gradually cools things off with Isabela after that. Thank the Maker, Bella doesn't make a thing out of it, doesn't ask awkward questions or get irritable at Hawke when they're on a job. 

Mother asks about her, a few weeks after the last time Isabela stays over. 

"She's busy," Hawke evades, searching immediately for an excuse to leave the house. 

"Did you two fight?" Leandra asks, her tone disappointed in that way which goes straight to Hawke's stomach. "You should go and apologise to her."

"Oh, I would," Hawke says, halfway to the door already, "But it turns out she's actually desperately in love with you. You should probably go ask if she'll marry you instead. Bring some flowers. Or money, she likes money."

"Marian-" her mother starts, but Hawke manages to escape before the telling off gets any further than that. 

She goes and finds Varric, drags him off on a commission she's been given to track down a gang terrorising the docks. Varric, wonderful Varric, doesn't ask awkward questions. He doesn't need to. He just shoots things while she stabs them, and then buys the first round. "You're the love of my life," she tells him a few hours and a very long way into their cups later. 

"I know, Hawke," he says, patting her absently on the head while he scribbles messy notes for his next novella onto a scrap of old parchment. 

"You're meant to say it back."

"You're the love of my life."

"You were looking at Bianca," she accuses. He shrugs, his mouth barely curving upward as he smiles slightly. Hawke flops her head down onto the table. 

The thing is, it's not like she broke things off with Isabela for Anders. Obviously not. Because he didn't care. Doesn't care. Likes her as a friend, and not even one he'd sleep with. So it would be ridiculous for her to call things off with a hot, sharp-tongued pirate who will actually fuck her just because his mouth had flattened a little bit when Isabela said that. 

She hasn't heard from Bethany in a month when Anders comes to ask for help. His movements are erratic, his hair a mess. Hawke sits on her hands to keep from trying to reach out and fix it. It's not like she has any of her own shit together, but as Justice sends Anders spinning further out of control she still wants to drop everything and try to fix him. And then he tells her what's brought him there. 

"All of them?" she asks, her stomach turning like she's swallowed the table where Bethany's letters haven't been arriving. 

"Every last one of us," he says grimly, running a hand through his mussed hair. "Solves the problem altogether. No risk of possession. No risk of us trying anything."

"They can't," she says, like a child. Of course they can. The look he gives her knows it. She stands, paces, hand going to the comfort of her dagger's hilt. "Who-" 

"The name I heard was Alrik. But it won't be him alone. The Grand Cleric, Knight Commander Meredith - you know what the templars have been doing here. I can't bloody move for their patrols."

"You think they're in on it?" 

"Don't you?" he says, and that old hidden edge in his voice is naked now, sharp and manic. 

She grabs his shoulder, tries to anchor him. "We need proof," she reminds him, her mind working on the details. If she lets herself feel what he's telling her she'll go straight to the Gallows and try to cut Bethany out of that fucking circle with nothing but a six-inch dagger. She'll make a mistake. She can't afford any more of those. Hawke doesn't have enough people left to lose. 

Anders eventually nods, the anger tightening back into him. They get the others, and head to the Gallows tunnels. 

They find Alrik and his cronies. They find a young mage girl cowering, begging as Alrik jokes about doing whatever he wants with her once they've turned her into a compliant shell. 

Hawke's expecting it when Anders fragments into blue light. Something thrills, dark and sharp and angry within her, as he explodes with blue-glowing rage and guts the templars where they stand. 

But Justice doesn't leave as quickly as usual once the dead are at their feet. "Demon," the girl calls him - and, well, technically, she's right - and the sparking rage glows out from Anders' body for a second time. 

Hawke doesn't think for a moment before throwing herself between them. "Anders!" she says sharply to wherever he's gotten lost down inside his mind. "She isn't the enemy. You don't want to do this." She grabs his face, makes him look at her. 

For a moment he flares brighter, but then the light fades. His eyes stop glowing. He sees her, his confused, scared eyes searching her face. And then, he sees the girl. 

"Don't hurt me," she's saying, cowering, scrabbling away across the ground. Anders' face twists in agony. 

"I wouldn't," he says, but it comes out as a broken question. The mage disappears, and Anders does too. 

Hawke finds him in his clinic with his head in his hands. 

"I found this on Alrik," she offers. "He was pushing for a Tranquil solution. But they'd refused." 

Anders is still for a long moment, in the way a hollow paper lantern is still. "I was worried it wasn't true," he mutters. "A delusion. Another one."

"No," she says, something in her chest aching like it's plummeting off an edge. "It was real. You were right."

"I nearly killed her." His voice is like shrapnel, like a lost child. "If you hadn't been there, I would have."

"Well, I was," she says. "And I will be next time too." 

"You won't always be."

"I will. I'll help you. And I'll stop you if you need me to."

He looks at her for the longest time, then nods, a tiny jerk of his head. 

Something shifts between them after that. Shifts in him. He's always been serious, but now it's like he's waiting. Waiting for her to decide it's time to stop him. What's worse, part of her is waiting for the same thing. 

It gets to her, itches under her skin with each serious nod he gives her, each too-quiet response to her jokes. 

"Well, he's an abomination," Fenris says flatly when she admits that's what has her preoccupied. "That was always going to be what had to happen. He loses his mind, and you put him down. If he's sad about it, he shouldn't have made a deal with a demon."

And like a goat being pulled firmly in one direction, Hawke pushes back the exact opposite way. Everyone is acting like Anders is a threat she'll have to deal with. So she acts the exact opposite. 

She spends time at the clinic whenever any of their friends are there injured (and with Kirkwall edging closer and closer to chaos, its alleys and dark corners getting more violent by the day, they're in there a lot). She teases him when they play wicked grace, makes stupid bets with him and the others for absurd dares (this is how she ends up streaking through Hightown, and how Varric gets landed with a commission to write Merrill and Aveline into his next serial as the romantic leads). She acts like he's nothing but her friend as if her life depends on it. It makes Anders smile, just barely. His eyes are still on her more often than not, but she feels less like an ax over his head just waiting to fall. 

One day, she walks into his clinic to find him putting out a saucer of milk. "I miss having a cat around," he says, peering down the alleyways as if one might be trotting up already. The victory of the moment sits between them unspoken: he feels enough like he isn't a threat that he trusts himself with a pet. 

There's another victory in the tentative passion, the earnest, clean, hopeful anger in Anders' voice as he talks about the coming conflict, the inevitability of revolution. The need for it. The chance that maybe in its wake, something better could be built. Something good. 

"I never thanked you properly," he says suddenly, interrupting himself. "You've always supported mages, used your voice here to argue for our rights. You didn't have to. It means a lot."

"Of course I have to," she says. "It's the right thing. It's how I can still look after Bethany." She pauses for a moment, somehow unsure of herself, then pushes on. "And you." 

He looks at her. The air between them is tangible. "I…" he starts, then stops. "Thank you." 

Hawke feels exposed. Like she's said too much, pushed too far. Caring too loudly, without the excuse of alcohol, without the couching of humour. She clears her throat, reaching for jokes like a shield to pull between them. 

"Well, what can I say," she says, her tone shifting as she smiles. "I always had a thing for underdogs. Especially when they're pretty." 

Normally, Anders would shake his head at her and move on to the next job. Normally, he'd ignore it. Normally, this tension between them would unfurl, shift back into something muted which she can sweep past and pretend not to see. 

Instead, he swallows. He holds her gaze. "I've told you why I'm a bad idea," he says quietly. "You've seen what I am. What would happen if I lose control one day. You deserve so much better than what I could offer." There's an intensity to his voice, but none of the mania. She swallows, her world narrowing to the way Anders is looking at her. His jaw works before he speaks again, the tension of restraint audible in the words. "But my self control isn't perfect, and I'm a man as well as all the rest of it. So please, Marian, stop tempting me to imagine this could be something more."

Her name in his voice thrills over her skin like electricity. There's something light and pale and floating in her chest at his words. At the idea that this - that, maybe, she - might be something he wants. 

Hawke shrugs, tilting her head slightly as she takes a step towards him. "But I like teasing you," she says, pleased at how even her voice is. His eyes are brown, rich, golden brown, only Anders looking out at her from behind them. He doesn't move away. She decides to push, just a little further. "How much longer do you think I'd have to go before you do something about it?" 

It's like a dam breaking. One moment he's staring at her, his jawline edged with tension. The next, he's striding towards her, reaching for her, pulling her towards him. And then he's kissing her. And he's kissing her. And he's kissing her. There's a noise in the back of his throat and it sounds like relief, sounds like finally. He pulls back for a moment, then kisses her again, soft and gentle and careful. She chases him as he pulls away, butts her forehead against his. Marian wants to curl into him, bury her face in the curve of his neck, wrap herself tight around him and press kisses along the line of each collar bone. She wants to kiss him the way they fight, wants to jump up and wrap her legs over his hips and feel him slam her into the wall. She wants to fuck him right here in the clinic, and in the back room at the Hanged Man, and on her luxurious bed in the estate, and she wants to do all of it without relinquishing a single inch of space between them to the empty air. 

But he pushes away. She sees him grasping for his walls, his control, the safety of distance. Sees him start to close off. Opens her mouth to say something, say whatever she can to stop him. What comes out, quite by accident, is the truth. 

"I love you," she says. Out loud. And he hears her. 

It stops him. He stops moving away. "You deserve better."

"I love you," she tells him, self preservation be damned. 

"Marian," he says, his voice pleading, warning. "You can't. You shouldn't. Think about it."

"I have," she says, voice layered with a level of implication Isabella would have been proud of. "A lot." 

He meets her eyes. His own are almost black, the pupils are so blown. Her breath catches.

Anders casts his eyes upward, scrubs a hand over his face. "This is a terrible idea. You should change your mind. You should tell me to go."

"I'm not going to." 

He exhales shakily. "Go back to your estate," he says, and it's an order. Marian's eyebrows raise. "I'll- Maker help me, I'm not strong enough to be the one who says no here." It's quiet, as if he's talking to himself. He meets her eyes again. "I'll come and see you tonight," he says. "If the door is open, I'll come to you. If not, I'll know you came to your senses. I hope for both our sakes you do."

She walks slowly towards him, desire coursing through her as he swallows, tenses, leans against the bench with his hands behind him as if otherwise he doesn't trust himself not to reach for her. 

She stops a metre from him. "If you don't show up, I'll come and find you," she threatens. He nods. 

Marian Hawke turns to leave. He'll come, she knows. And she'll let him in. 

He's probably right. She wants this far too much for it to be a good idea. 

But Marian Hawke has never shied away from bad ideas. And she doesn't start now.


End file.
